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In this work, a shape-optimized periodic pattern design is employed to boost the short circuit current of solar cells. A decent result of an additional 16.1% enhancement in short circuit current is achieved by solely patternwise optimization, compared to the baseline structure that is already under full parameter optimization. The underlying physics is that the shape-optimized pattern leads to optimal quasi-guided mode excitations. As a result of the pattern design, a single strongly confined quasi-guided mode is replaced with several weakly confined modes, to cover a broader spectral range. Previous works of optimized periodic gratings result in gradually varied grating heights and require grayscale lithography leading to high process complexity. Using randomized pattern for isotropic Lambertian light trapping, on the other hand, leads to an overly large simulation domain. The proposed pattern design methodology achieves the optimal balance between the slow-light enhancement strength and the enhancement spectral range for nanophotonic light trapping using quasi-guided modes.

White metal-like omnidirectional mirror from porous silicon dielectric multilayersRecently, diffuse reflectors are being incorporated into solar cells, due to the advantage of no metallic absorption loss, higher reflectance, decent light scattering property by embedded TiO 2 scatterers, and the ease of fabrication. Different methods have been employed to analyze diffuse reflectors, including Monte Carlo method, N-flux method, and a one-dimensional approximation based on semi-coherent optics, and the calculated reflectance is around 80% by these methods. In this work, rigorous wave optics solution is used, and it is shown that the reflectance for diffuse medium mirrors can actually be as high as >99% over a broad spectral range, provided the TiO 2 scatterer geometry is properly optimized. The bandwidth of diffuse reflectors is un-achievable by other dielectric mirrors such as distributed Bragg reflectors or high index contrast grating mirror, using the same index contrast. Finally, it is promisingly found that even if the distribution of TiO 2 is random, the wide-band reflection can still be achieved for the optimized TiO 2 geometry. Initial experimental result is included in the supplementary material which shows the high feasibility of diffuse medium mirrors for solar cells. V C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.

The geometry and dimension design is the most critical part for the success in nano-photonic devices. The choices of the geometrical parameters dramatically affect the device performance. Most of the time, simulation is conducted to locate the suitable geometry, but in many cases simulation can be ineffective. The most pronounced examples are large-area randomized patterns for solar cells, light emitting diode (LED), and thermophtovoltaics (TPV). The large random pattern is nearly impossible to calculate and optimize due to the extended CPU runtime and the memory limitation. Other scenarios that numerical simulations become ineffective include three-dimensional complex structures with anisotropic dielectric response. This leads to extended simulation time especially for the repeated runs during its geometry optimization. In this paper, we show that by incorporating genetic algorithm (GA) into real-world experiments, shortened trial-and-error time can be achieved. More importantly, this scheme can be used for many photonic design problems that are unsuitable for simulation-based optimizations. Moreover, the experimentally implemented genetic algorithm (Exp-GA) has the additional advantage that the resultant objective value is a real one rather than a theoretical one. This prevents the gaps between the modeling and the fabrication due to the process variation or inaccurate numerical models. Using TPV emitters as an example, 22% enhancement in the mean objective value is achieved.